Reduce startup time of .NET windows form app running off of a networked drive

Question

I have a simple .NET 2.0 windows form app that runs off of a networked drive (e.g. \MyServer\MyShare\app.exe). It's very basic, and only loads the bare minimum .NET libraries. However, it still takes ~6-10 seconds to load. People think something must be wrong that app so small takes so long to load.

Are there any suggestions for improving the startup speed?

Answer 1

Try out Sysinternals Process Explorer. It has an column of "% time in JIT". If that number is large you could run ngen on your application. If it's not it's likely to be a slow network connection. CodeGuru has a tutorial on usage of ngen.

Answer 2

To speed up load time, you can compile a tiny start application and let that application do the loading of assemblies in runtime from a library outside bin folder.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837908